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by celeste9



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Character Study, Established Relationship, Fluff, Multi, Vignette
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-03
Updated: 2016-09-03
Packaged: 2018-08-12 16:55:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 407
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7942033
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/celeste9/pseuds/celeste9
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The only people who matter have always known who Harry really is.</p>
            </blockquote>





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**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this for a prompt for the Wish Fulfillment Ficathon but to be quite honest, in the time it's taken for me to get this cross-posted here I've forgotten what the prompt was!

Harry has never got used to seeing his name in the newspaper.

You would think that years of being the Boy Who Lived, years of being the _Daily Prophet_ ’s favorite bit of gossip, would have done it. It hasn’t, though. Harry still looks at his scowling image on the front page, trying to hide behind a plant, and feels this faint stab of unease, this echo of annoyed wonderment.

_Why am I in the paper? Why does anyone care?_

He takes a walk, the sun bright but not terribly warm. He should have worn a jumper. He sits beneath the shade of a birch tree and hugs his knees to his chest.

Harry’s been turning down interviews so frequently that he doesn’t even need to wait to be asked anymore. He always knows what they’re going to say. He can give a response without thinking, without blinking, the words rote by now.

Everyone wants to know him. Famous Harry Potter. The hero.

But they don’t _really_ want to know him. He has learned by now that it doesn’t matter what he says; the journalists will always find a way to make his words fit what they want to write, to fit the idea of who they think Harry should be. Who they want him to be.

Harry isn’t who they say he is. He never has been.

He hears them before he sees them, footsteps crunching on the ground, and he doesn’t need to look.

“Forgot your jumper,” Ron says, tossing one at Harry’s head. 

It’s a bit knobbly. It’s one of Harry’s Christmas jumpers from Mrs. Weasley. Harry holds it in his lap like a child’s blankie, like security, like something special and important and priceless.

Hermione sits down in the grass next to Harry, leaning against him. Her hair tickles his cheek. “You forgot to eat,” she tells him.

“Knew you’d remind me,” Harry says, smiling when Hermione smacks his knee.

“Idiot,” she says, but it’s fond.

Ron sprawls on his stomach, looking down the hill to where the sunlight glints off the surface of a lake. “Fred and George used to shove me in that lake,” he says conversationally.

Harry rests his hand in Ron’s thick red hair, strokes it. Hermione tucks her arm in the crook of Harry’s elbow.

It doesn’t matter what everyone else says. The only people who matter are right here, and they know exactly who Harry is.

_**End** _


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